Needs more R&D

Rosewill RX305 4B - SATA III-to-USB 3.0 & eSATA 4-Bay 2.5” or 3.5” Hard Drive Enclosure - Full Aluminum Case with Removable Fan, Supports Up to 20 TB Capacity (4 x 5 TB)

Plug and Play, Hot Swapping
Supports SATA III up to 6 Gbps
USB 3.0 2.5” & 3.5” Aluminum Body
Max. Capacity: Up to 20 TB (4 x 5 TB)
80 mm Fan with Auto Speed Variation by Total HDDs

Needs more R&D 03/14/2015

This review is from: Rosewill RX305 4B - SATA III-to-USB 3.0 & eSATA 4-Bay 2.5” or 3.5” Hard Drive Enclosure - Full Aluminum Case with Removable Fan, Supports Up to 20 TB Capacity (4 x 5 TB)

Pros:

Nice style. A good physical size.

Cons:

Not reliable due to bad power save mode, uses screws to fasten the disks to the sled rather than using other methods, see below.

Overall Review:

What Ron said. I bought mine there too, and my review is also copied from there:

In general, it seems to work as advertised. Four bays requiring screws, activity lights on each bay. The lights are green but turn blue when active. It's harder to see than a normal red activity light. (minus 1/2 egg)

The trays themselves are made of fairly thin metal, but they work. The specs say the enclosure is wired for hot swapping. I originally powered up with two drives. When I tried adding a third drive, the Macintosh lost connection to two existing and mounted drives. Minus another 1/2 egg for not really being hot-swappable.

On the plus side, the latches appear solid, though I expect they'd wear down with enough swaps, as they're based on friction and made of plastic.

Power switch is on the back, just above the power plug, which is a normal but a little inconvenient.

The manual is in English and French. It is printed pretty small, so these 50yo eyes have trouble with it. It contains instructions for set up and partitioning for all of Windows, Ubuntu Linux, and Macintosh, in that order.

One thing which bugs me is that it has a power save mode I can't seem to turn off. I don't want my drives to have a delay when something tries to access them, causing problems with paused video and such. And causing problems with dismounting drives, which causes problems shutting down for the night, and with reboots. Minus 2 eggs. They confirmed that this mode can not be shut off.

When I went to their website, it wanted me to register. I did so, signed in, and got into a loop, where one URL would load, then another one would load, then the first one, then the second one. I'm using Chrome, so it's not like I'm using a strange browser. I ended up using their "Contact US" to try to get support. If I can turn off the "sleep" functionality, I'll keep the product. If not, back it goes.

Their customer service decided to RMA the device for exchange. They sent me a UPS label, so it's on their dime. After they confirmed the power save issue, I told them to change the "exchange" to a "return", which they did. Good people, who need to do more development on this device.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you very much for purchasing this unit.
We strive to provide the most reliable and highest quality products to our customers.

Thanks for the feedback. We will pass it along to our QA and Design teams for further investigation.

Thanks,
Rosewill Customer Care

2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes Yes / No

Howard S.
Verified Owner
Owned For: 1 week to 1 month

write a review